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The Voting Rights Act will likely face threats during the second Trump administration. Court rulings over the past decade have already weakened that landmark law. Now advocates are responding with a push for more states to enact their own voting protections. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: Eight states have what are known as state voting rights acts.
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PENELOPE TSERNOGLOU: Elections Committee will come to order.
WANG: And Michigan may be next.
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UNIDENTIFIED CLERK: Madam chair, you have six yeas, two nays - motion passes.
WANG: This month, state House Democrats there voted to advance legal protections against racial discrimination in elections that don't rely on the federal government. And there are efforts to pass similar state-level voting rights acts in places like Colorado, Maryland and New Jersey.
ADAM LIOZ: We can expect more attacks than progress at the federal level. And this is the moment to act for voters.
WANG: Adam Lioz of the Legal Defense Fund says voters are likely to see the new Republican-controlled Congress stall any push to strengthen the federal Voting Rights Act. And opponents of that law are still trying to chip away at it in court. For now, Lioz says state laws can offer a more accessible way of protecting the rights of voters of color in state and local elections.
LIOZ: This is a place where a lot of discrimination happens and goes unresolved because voters and community organizations lack the resources to bring a federal Voting Rights Act case, which can be expensive and cumbersome.
WANG: You see this law as hope.
ERNIE TIRADO: Yes. Yes, as a opportunity to get representation, to have a seat at the table.
WANG: Ernie Tirado is one of the voters of color who used New York's Voting Rights Act to file a lawsuit, which has raised broad legal questions about these types of state laws. Tirado's case is against the town of Newburgh. It's a suburb north of New York City where voting is racially polarized.
The town board is all white.
TIRADO: Yes, has been since I've been here and probably before that. So reading a little bit about the law, I came to realize that we have an at-large voting system here.
WANG: Tirado's lawsuit argues that system of electing candidates as at-large representatives of one voting district dilutes the collective power of Black and Hispanic voters. But a state judge found that New York's Voting Rights Act violates the U.S. Constitution, a controversial ruling that's now on appeal.
LATA NOTT: This definitely isn't the first time that someone has questioned the constitutionality of a state voting rights act.
WANG: Lata Nott is with the Campaign Legal Center.
NOTT: The Washington Voting Rights Act and California Voting Rights Act - they were both challenged as unconstitutional, and courts found both of them to be constitutional.
WANG: Another challenge to proposed state VRAs is getting prioritized in state legislatures, says Nuzhat Chowdhury of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.
NUZHAT CHOWDHURY: So far, even though the Democrats have been in control of the New Jersey legislature, they haven't really listened to us.
WANG: But now, with Republicans taking full control in Washington, D.C., after the recent election...
CHOWDHURY: We hope and anticipate that the results really light a fire under them, because it seems more and more likely that the federal VRA will continue to be quite gutted in the next four years.
SPENCER OVERTON: The challenge, though, is that over 50% of Black Americans live in the South, and only Virginia currently has a state voting rights act.
WANG: Spencer Overton, a law professor at George Washington University, says that's why these state laws are ultimately a limited solution. Bills have been introduced in Alabama, Florida and Georgia. And so far, no Republican-controlled state has passed a state voting rights act.
OVERTON: If you are in a state without state voting protections, where you have incumbents who utilize discriminatory practices, you really do need federal protections.
WANG: But with a weakened federal Voting Rights Act, Overton says voters of color have to make do with what they have.
Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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